Part 45 (1/2)

”I don't believe she has, Lyn. I'm not worried about Ann as you and Con are. Her Lady Macbeth pose is just plain girl; but she has depths we have never sounded. Sometimes I think she hides them to prove her grat.i.tude and affection, and because she is so helpless. She was nearly five when she came to you, Lyn, and I believe she does remember the hills and her mother!”

”Why, Betty, what makes you think this?” Lynda was appalled.

”It is her eyes. There are moments when she is looking back--far back.

She is trying to hold to something that is escaping her. Love her, Lyn, love her as you never have before.”

”If I thought that, Betty!” Lynda was aghast. ”Oh! Betty--the poor darling! I cannot believe she could be so strong--so--terrible.”

”It's more or less subconscious--such things always are--but I think Ann will some day prove what I say. In a way, it's like the feeling I have for--for my own baby, Lyn. I see him in Bobbie; I feel him in Bobbie's dearness and naughtiness. Ann holds what went before in what is around her now. Sometimes it puzzles her as Bobbie puzzles me.”

About this time--probably because he was happier than he had ever been before, possibly because he had more time that he could conscientiously call his own than he had had for many a well-spent year--Truedale repaired to his room under the eaves, sneaking away, with a half-guilty longing, to his old play! So many times had he resurrected it, then cast it aside; so many hopes and fears had been born and killed by the interruption to his work, that he feared whatever strength it might once have had must be gone now forever.

Still he retreated to his attic room once more--and Lynda asked no questions. With strange understanding Ann guarded that door like a veritable dragon. When Billy's toddling steps followed his father Ann waylaid him; and many were the swift, silent struggles near the portal before the rampant Billy was carried away kicking with Ann's firm hand stifling his outraged cries.

”What Daddy doing there?” Billy would demand when once conquered.

”That's n.o.body's business but Daddy's,” Ann unrelentingly insisted.

”I--I want to know!” Billy pleaded.

”Wait until Daddy wants you to know.”

Under the eaves, hope grew in Truedale's heart. The old play had certainly the subtle human interest that is always vital. He was sure of that. Once, he almost decided to take Ann into his confidence. The child had such a dramatic sense. Then he laughed. It was absurd, of course!

No! if the thing ever amounted to anything--if, by putting flesh upon the dry bones and blood into the veins, he could get it over--it was to be his gift to Lynda! And the only thing that encouraged him as he worked, rather stiffly after all the years, was the certainty that at times he heard the heart beat in the shrunken and shrivelled thing! And so--he reverently worked on.

CHAPTER XXII

Among the notes and suggestions sprinkled through the old ma.n.u.script were lines that once had aroused the sick and bitter resentment of Truedale in the past:

”Thy story hath been written long since.

Thy part is to read and interpret.”

Over and over again he read the words and pondered upon his own change of mind. Youth, no matter how lean and beggared it may be, craves and insists upon conflict--upon the personal loss and gain. But as time takes one into its secrets, the soul gets the wider--Truedale now was sure it was the wider--outlook. Having fought--because the fight was part of the written story--the craving for victory, of the lesser sort, dwindled, while the higher call made its appeal. To be part of the universal; to look back upon the steps that led up, or even down, and hold the firm belief that here, or elsewhere--what mattered in the mighty chain of many links--the ”interpretation” told!

Truedale came to the conclusion that fatalism was no weak and spineless philosophy, but one for the making of strong souls.

Failure, even wrong, might they not, if unfettered by the narrow limitations of here and now, prove miracle-working elements?

Then the effect upon others entered into Truedale's musings as it had in the beginning. The ”stories” of others! He leaned his head at this juncture upon his clasped hands and thought of Nella-Rose! Thought of her as he always did--tenderly, gently, but as holding no actual part in his real life. She was like something that had gained power over an errant and unbridled phase of his past existence. He could not make her real in the sense of the reality of the men, women, and affairs that now sternly moulded and commanded him. She was--she always would be to him--a memory of something lovely, dear, but elusive. He could no longer place and fix her. She belonged to that strange period of his life when, in the process of finding himself, he had blindly plunged forward without stopping to count the cost or waiting for clear-sightedness.

”What has she become?” he thought, sitting apart with his secret work.

And then most fervently he hoped that what Lynda had once suggested might indeed be true. He prayed, as such men do pray, that the experience which had enabled him to understand himself and life better might also have given Nella-Rose a wider, freer s.p.a.ce in which to play her chosen part.

He recalled his knowledge of the hill-women as Jim White had described them--women to whom love, in its brightest aspect, is denied. Surely Nella-Rose had caught a glimpse more radiant than they. Had it pointed her to the heaven of good women--or--?

And eventually this theme held and swayed the play--this effect of a deep love upon such a nature as Nella-Rose's, the propelling power--the redeeming and strengthening influence. In the end Truedale called his work ”The Interpretation.”